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A Bear for Punishment

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A Bear for Punishment is a 1951 Looney Tunes short directed by Chuck Jones.

Plot[]

It's Father's Day, and Junyer and Ma have a bunch of big surprises in store for nice ol' Pa, including having breakfast in bed, shaving his face, and a pipe filled with gunpowder, all which often result in Pa getting all the bad luck and losing his temper as the result, mainly due to Junyer's stupidity. There's also a gala Father's Day pageant, and Pa sits groaning through Junyer's recitation and aghast at Ma's tap-dancing rendition of "I'm Just Wild About Father".

Caricatures[]

Availability[]

Streaming[]

Censorship[]

  • The Bugs Bunny Show version of this short on ABC edited the "Let's Give a Cheer for Father" song to remove the two times Ma and Junyer Bear fire shotguns.[2]
  • Nickelodeon left in the gunfire in the "Let's Give a Cheer for Father" song, but edited two scenes:[2]
    • Early in the short, when Pa is trying to shut off Junyer Bear's alarm clocks, he yells, "How do you turn these blasted things off?!" Junyer shushes the clocks and they all stop. Rather than congratulate his son, Pa slams a clock in Junyer's face and Junyer is shown with a broken alarm clock for a face before it cuts to Ma saying, "But Henry..."
    • The scene where Junyer mistakes gunpowder for pipe tobacco by misspelling it ("'G-U-N-P-O-W-D-E-R'. Duh, 'tobacco'") and congratulating himself on being a good speller ("I am a good speller, I am. C-A-T, dog. B-A-T, Rhode Island."), although a similar misspelling scene from "Cat-Tails for Two" was left uncensored on Nickelodeon.

Notes[]

  • This was the last The Three Bears cartoon.
  • Unlike the previous four Three Bears cartoons, this cartoon didn't open with the standard narration introducing the three bears which reads as "Once upon a time, there lived three bears, Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear".
  • This cartoon notably reveals Junyer's canonical age, where he is revealed to be seven-and-a-half-years old, implying that Junyer is only a child despite his huge adult-like appearance.
    • Junyer still wears diapers even though he is seven years old.
  • The joke where Junyer misspells tobacco as G-U-N-P-O-W-D-E-R would later be repeated in "Cat-Tails for Two" two years later, except that this time Benny the cat misspells water as P-E-T-R-O-L. Coincidentally in both cartoons, this ultimately resulted in both Junyer and Benny inadvertently causing explosive harm to both Pa and George respectively.
  • Among Junyer's comic books are Looney Tunes, with Bugs Bunny on the cover, Porky Pig, with no picture on the cover, and "Daffy Detective".
  • On the floor next to Papa's bed is the controversial Kinsey Report Sexual Behavior in the Human Male from 1948.
  • The DVD extras for this short include Stan Freberg reminiscing about the short and reciting part of Junyer Bear's poem, "My Pa", in the bear's voice; and a clip of Chuck Jones stating that Papa Bear's growling, "I HATE breakfast in bed!" was taken from his own experience as a father when his children would try to serve him on Father's Day.
  • The march, "Father", performed by Junyer and Ma, is a special vocal written to the tune of "Frat", a long-standing Warner cartoon staple.
  • For unknown reasons, the restored print first present on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2 plasters the original opening music with the 1955-64 version of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down". The original 1946-55 theme can be heard on the music/sound effects only track.
  • Unlike other reissues in the 1959-64 season, this short's reissue uses the Looney Tunes ending card instead of the Merrie Melodies one and ends with the 1941-55 version of "Merrily We Roll Along", replacing the original ending theme.

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. ↑ https://chart.copyrightdata.com/CopyrightCatalogRenewals.html
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-b.aspx
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